With the first day of school right around the corner, the Otero County undersheriff ensured citizens that local law enforcement is ready to keep children safe. Undersheriff Daron Syling spoke about safety issues in county schools at the monthly meeting of the Republican Women of Otero County Wednesday.

Syling said the Otero County Sheriff's Office has taken great measures to ensure readiness should an emergency situation arise at a school in the county. Syling said the OCSO has done extensive training to be able to respond to a school shooting incident.

"This is kind of a tough topic to talk about, but unfortunately it's one that we have to deal with on a regular basis in law enforcement," Syling said. "Hopefully we never have to deal with a shooting here in Otero County or in Alamogordo, but if we do I think we are better prepared then anybody else."

He said the sheriff's office developed and instituted the REACT program which stands for Reality Enhanced Advanced Combat Training.

Syling said the program is certified by the New Mexico Law Enforcement Academy.

"REACT is a 44 hour intense, advance-training course," he said.

Syling said deputies and other law enforcement agents who take the course learn advance handgun training and advance rifle training. He said during the training scenarios agents are able to use actual weapons thanks to the use of Simunition which is a non-leathal training ammunition.

"Simunition is the actual weapon that we carry but instead of a lead bullet, it's a plastic bullet," he said. "That plastic bullet is filled with colored laundry soap."

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Syling said OCSO teamed up with other law enforcement agencies and the Alamogordo Public School system to train and practice the procedures that should be taken in the event of an active shooter incident.

"APS and local law enforcement did live scenario training at the Alamogordo High School," he said. "We put bad guys in the high school and we taught our officers how to go in and how to secure the school and how to make the students safe."

Syling said in the past officers were trained to wait for back up before handling an active shooter incident. He said now officers are being trained to respond as quickly and efficiently as possible.

"Right now what we train our deputies and what we are training other law enforcement officers to do if we have an active shooter event – no matter if it's at a school or at a movie theater or at Walmart — the first police officer on scene makes entry all by himself or by herself," he said. "So when you see all this stuff, the advance training that we had to do. We basically had to make people confident to go in there by themselves and take care of business. Because of who is in there – your loved ones. Your kids, your family members and we got to get in there and stop what is going on."

Syling said the reason it's important for an officer to be able to assess a shooter situation alone is because every second counts when lives are on the line.

"At Sandy Hook there were officers on scene for over six minutes before they made entry into that school," he said. "There were officers on scene when the last shot was fired. The last shot that was fired was the shooter taking his own life. But there were officers on scene and they were waiting outside. So we had to change what it was that we were doing and how we were going to respond."

Syling said the OCSO has taken extra steps to ensure a quick response time to any school emergency by providing emergency radios to every school in the county.

He said Sheriff Benny House bought radios for each school in the county and had them programmed as a top priority channel on law enforcement radios.

"The school frequency is a stand-alone frequency that each school has. That frequency is now the priority channel in our vehicles," Syling said. "With the radio — when that school picks up the radio and says we have a man with a gun — that automatically kicks onto our channel as priority and we're hearing real time information.

"At dispatch each school is assigned a number and we know exactly what number that is so they just key the mike and say, 'we need help,' they don't even have to tell us it's a La Luz or Buena Vista or wherever," he said. "They key the mike and the number comes up on our radio and we know where they're at."

Syling said the radio cuts the emergency response time significantly. He said the radios allow law enforcement to be able to respond quicker then if 911 was called by the school.

"At Sandy Hook it took 42 seconds from the time the 911 phone rang to the time the first dispatch went out," he said. "These radios save seconds. It saves seconds and seconds save lives."